Lakeland Police Scandals: 'Is It Too Much To Ask?'

Lakeland Police leaders told the City Commission on Friday that 25 felony cases that State Attorney Jerry Hill cited Dec. 20 in a presentation to the commission were not as bad as they seemed.

Lakeland Police leaders told the City Commission on Friday that 25 felony cases that State Attorney Jerry Hill cited Dec. 20 in a presentation to the commission were not as bad as they seemed. Hill had said Lakeland officers did not respond to his office's request for information needed for prosecution.Thirteen or more of the cases involved reluctant witnesses or victims, said Lt. Steve Walker, head of the department's Office of Professional Standards, while five or six cases had State Attorney paperwork problems, and Lakeland was to blame for five or six cases, reported The Ledger's John Chambliss and Rick Rousos in an article Saturday.

TIT FOR TATWalker — working from a 68-page computer slide show and a 614-page book of backup documents provided to the city commissioners — picked nits with the material presented by Hill.For example, he displayed a court transcript to which Hill had referred, and pointed out sections highlighted in yellow and with a large red arrow to show who had said what to whom. The bottom line did not change: The officer resigned.However, fair is fair. If Hill made accusations that the Police Department considers inaccurate, the department is right to say so.In point-counterpoint matters, the general procedure is accusation, defense, rebuttal. Time will tell if Hill rebuts the Police Department's response.Communication problems, Walker said, have been reduced by having information requests sent not only to an officer, but to supervisors one and two levels above the officer.

MEASUREMENTSHow problems and successes can be measured — providing statistics — is what many city commissioners asked Walker and Police Chief Lisa Womack.An exchange between Commissioner Don Selvage and Womack summarized their interest:"In my view, there are three outcomes that we need to show ... to our public," Selvage said:■ "The first is in 911 — emergency call systems — where we've had a serious allegation of something happened, and we didn't respond as quickly as we should have. So, is it too much to ask for data that says, 'Mr. Hill, we received X number of 911 calls, we responded to them, we've had this number of complaints and this is a benchmark that is nationally accepted'?"?■ About follow-through, Selvage said, "Is it too much to ask, 'Hey, Mr. Hill, we've made this number of arrests, which have resulted in this number of prosecutions, which meets a national benchmark that puts us in the top 90 percentile'?"?■ "And the third outcome is public records. There's been a lot of uproar about that. We don't give out public records as we should. 'Well, Mr. Hill, we've gotten this number of public records requests, we responded, we've had zero complaints or two complaints, and that put us in the top,'?'' Selvage said."I'm looking for data showing that we are improving," Selvage said. "We can attack the messenger and say, 'No it's not accurate,' but what we really need is proof that we are doing things right."Selvage is correct to focus on Police Department problems that are broad and deep.Statistics can provide useful facts but also can contain pitfalls.Lakeland's city commissioners must not allow themselves to set aside common sense for blind reliance on statistics. They must always be aware of the source of the statistics. The statistics' value will diminish greatly when they are gathered, analyzed and provided by the department at which oversight is aimed.